Judge presses lawyers on slow pace for Bolton classified documents case
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GREENBELT, MD — Lawyers for John Bolton and the Trump administration appeared in federal court in Maryland on Friday to discuss next steps in the criminal case against Trump’s former national security adviser, who was indicted last month on charges of mishandling classified and sensitive material.
Bolton was indicted last month on 18 criminal counts stemming from allegations that he withheld and transmitted classified and sensitive material during his first term, including national defense information.
Authorities accused him of sending more than 1,000 “diary-like” updates via email and texts to his wife and daughter between 2018 and 2019, including classified information from intelligence briefings and conversations with foreign officials.
The preliminary hearing in Bolton’s case on Friday was largely a procedural hearing, focusing on next steps for both sides to review the breadth of discovery materials Bolton is accused of illegally withholding and transmitting.
If nothing else, it underlined how far away Bolton’s case still seems. The deadlines agreed upon by both sides would put discovery in the case until 2026, and a status conference on the case is scheduled for October next year. The hearing date has not yet been set.
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Former national security adviser John Bolton arrives for his hearing at the Greenbelt Federal Courthouse in Greenbelt, Maryland, in October. (Rod Lamkey, Jr./AP)
U.S. District Judge Theodore D. Chuang appeared reluctant to accept the government’s proposed lengthy timeline for the document review process to occur, noting the government’s obligations under the Speedy Trials Act, which sets time limits for federal criminal cases.
Chuang told Justice Department attorney general Thomas Sullivan that seven months was “too long a time,” referring to the proposed May 22, 2026 date for discovery.
“How many documents are at stake here? Frankly, most of them should have been made before the indictment,” Chuang said. “Even assuming this can’t be completed, I still can’t understand why it took seven months.”
In response, prosecutors noted that they still needed to sort through nearly 1,000 pages of single-spaced documents taken from Bolton’s home and reiterated that they had set “aggressive deadlines” for the intelligence agency to review the documents.
Bolton’s attorney, Abbe Lowell, said in response that there were as many as three electronic devices “that they have not even started the review process for” and that all had to be reviewed by the filter team.
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John Bolton, who served as national security adviser during President Donald Trump’s first term, leaves his home in Bethesda, Md., on Friday, Oct. 17, 2025. (Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP)
Chuang ultimately agreed to grant a modified review schedule for the documents in question. The parties were ordered by Jan. 12 to produce the first tranche of 10 documents that prosecutors described as the “core” of Bolton’s indictment.
They will also file a joint status report with the court where they are involved in the discovery process, providing detailed information and recommending the next interim deadline and the scope of materials to be examined before that date.
The hearing comes as Bolton seeks to bring the criminal case as part of a broader effort to go after the Trump administration’s perceived political enemies, including former FBI director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James.
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Then-National Security Advisor John R. Bolton listens as then-President Donald J. Trump meets with Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington on July 18, 2019. (Washington Post via Jabin Botsford/Getty Images)
Yet the case against Bolton differs significantly.
Unlike those cases, Bolton’s investigation into classified materials has progressed in part during the Biden administration, and career prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney’s Office have approved the charges; This is in contrast to the lawsuits filed against Comey and James by Trump’s former lawyer Lindsey Halligan.
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Last month, Bolton, who pleaded not guilty to all charges, was ordered by the magistrate to be released on the condition that he stay in the United States and surrender his passport.
“I have become the latest target of weaponizing the Justice Department to indict those it sees as its enemies on previously denied charges or to distort the facts,” Bolton said in a statement following his indictment. he said.
